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Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Violence, in McCarthy's postapocalyptic tour de force, has been visited worldwide in the form of a "long shear of light and then a series of low concussions" that leaves cities and forests burned, birds and fish dead and the earth shrouded in gray clouds of ash. In this landscape, an unnamed man and his young son journey down a road to get to the sea. (The man's wife, who gave birth to the boy after calamity struck, has killed herself.) They carry blankets and scavenged food in a shopping cart, and the man is armed with a revolver loaded with his last two bullets. Beyond the ever-present possibility of starvation lies the threat of roving bands of cannibalistic thugs. The man assures the boy that the two of them are "good guys," but from the way his father treats other stray survivors the boy sees that his father has turned into an amoral survivalist, tenuously attached to the morality of the past by his fierce love for his son.

Review

I was very excited to read The Road. I had heard such great things. I wanted to love it. I did not get what I wanted. The Road had a great premise, real emotional pull and some very appalling cannibalism scenarios. You really cared about the unnamed characters and what was happening around them. Unfortunately, it was also slow, had no regard for proper punctuation and the ending was without fulfilling resolution. The lack of quotation marks and the inconsistent use of apostrophes in contractions distracted me from being fully submerged in the story. For me, it was just okay.

FINALLY! Someone who felt the same way as I did about the Road. I've been thinking that maybe I wasn't mature enough or something to read this book, since my biggest overall impression was just that it was slow and poorly punctuated. Which I am sure was trying to mean something, but just annoyed me.Anyhow, thanks for feeling the same way I did!

I just bought this book today. My 15 y/o daughter started perusing it and, knowing that I'm a writing teacher and a "grammar Nazi," said "Mom, you're not going to like this book. There's no proper punctuation." *LOL*

Thanks for your honest review. I will see what I think of it. And I'm glad you gave me a heads up about the horrific cannibalism scenes. I do better with that kind of thing if I've been forewarned.